


Where I Can Get Some Space

by andwhatyousaid



Series: Hurt/Comfort Bingo [2]
Category: Actor RPF, Marvel Cinematic Universe RPF
Genre: Breathplay, Choking, Erotic Anxiety, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Panic Attacks, negotiation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-07
Updated: 2015-04-07
Packaged: 2018-03-21 16:26:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3699077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/andwhatyousaid/pseuds/andwhatyousaid
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The red carpet can get overwhelming; Sebastian helps Chris remember how to breathe.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where I Can Get Some Space

**Author's Note:**

> A fill for the "panic attacks" square on my [hurt-comfort bingo card](http://andwhatyousaid.livejournal.com/13791.html) that is directly inspired by [Chris Evans and his very sensitive eyes being viscerally unable to handle the red carpet](http://andwhatyousaid.tumblr.com/post/96061857067/chris-evans-being-bothered-by-the-camera-flashes), and [Sebastian Stan canonically choking Chris Evans with his metal arm while they play-act as Bucky the Winter Soldier Barnes and Steve Captain America Rogers](http://andwhatyousaid.tumblr.com/post/95589656721/thirsty4bucky-x-i-could-live-off-the), which I highly rec giving yourself a moment to gander at, especially since both special moments are specifically referenced. This is also directly inspired by Chris Evans asking for it every day of his wretched, anxious life. 
> 
> Please do yourself a favor and re-read those tags above. Disclaimer: 1000% fiction. Title sourced from "Gooey" by Glass Animals. Infinite, sincere thanks to my personal savior, [Becca](http://archiveofourown.org/users/fallfreely), for giving this a read-through and finally getting it off of my hard-drive. Thanks to you, too, for reading.

Chris can’t get his sunglasses back on until after the photo-ops, and he isn’t supposed to be alone, he isn’t supposed to leave the area, let alone his mark on the carpet, but he needs five minutes — he needs just five minutes. He breaks for the lobby, clenching his sunglasses in one hand so tight he thinks the lenses are gonna crack, he’s gonna break them. He finds the nearest single-person bathroom he can, leaves the lights shut off and switches on the fan. Then he goes to splash ice-cold water on his face in the dark, still room.

He doesn’t know how long it is before Sebastian walks in on Chris leaning over the bathroom sink like he’s gonna puke any second, but he isn’t. He isn’t. He tells Sebastian that right away.

“Whoa,” Sebastian says, and switches on the light, which staggers on in stages until the whole ceiling is lit up. “You alright?”

“Yeah, yeah yeah,” Chris says, all in a row like that. “It’s just my eyes — they were, they wouldn’t stop watering. On the carpet.” He leans away from the sink so that he doesn’t have to look at himself in the mirror anymore and presses his palms to his closed lids hard enough to feel like he’s blacking out.

Sebastian’s shoes click against the tile, closer and closer, and he puts one hand on Chris’s chest, dead center, and the other on his back, holding him in. “It’s alright,” Sebastian says, his voice low and soft, close to Chris’s ears. “It’s bad out there, I know. You wanna take a couple deep breaths for me?”

Chris tries to, he does, but his lungs seize up in his chest and his breath chokes coming out; it makes his shoulders heave oddly, straining, and he thinks he might really throw up. His throat keeps tightening in a spasm, and he tugs at his collar and tie, frantic, to loosen them, hears a button flying off, bouncing and rolling like a dime across the floor.

It’s only after his strangled tie’s on the floor by his feet that he realizes it isn’t any better like this, that maybe the pressure — the real pressure from his clothes — is better than the imaginary one wearing him thin like he’s gonna swallow his own tongue whole and then cough it back up into the empty pristine sink basin. He puts his hand around his throat and squeezes, but it just makes him hiccup through another couple breaths.

Sebastian’s murmuring low and urgent into his ears again; Chris can’t hear him at all over the thumping of his pulse, loud enough that Sebastian must be able to hear it too, feel it from where he’s standing, close enough to see the matching thump of Chris’s chest.

Sebastian reaches for his hand at his throat, pulls it away, saying, “Don’t hurt yourself, come on. Chris, be careful.”

But Chris grapples with Sebastian’s hand, clumsy, and pulls it closer, flat against his bared throat. “Remember when we were filming that scene. Do you remember? When we had choreo, remember? I —”

“I don’t know,” Sebastian says, his face shuttering through a flipbook of expressions and landing on puzzled, his fingers shifting against Chris’s skin. “I — In fighting choreo? With my arm?”

“Yes,” Chris says, his voice breaking open. “Please.” He squeezes his hand around Sebastian’s, laying slack and useless on his throat. He shuts his eyes again so that he doesn’t have to look Sebastian in the face. “God, please, Sebastian, will you,” he says, tightening his hand around Sebastian’s. He has to stay stock-still to keep from tightening their hands until he can’t breathe at all.

“Chris — I don’t,” Sebastian says, his voice cracking halfway through. “This doesn’t seem like a good idea, buddy. Maybe you should —”

Chris shakes his head and Sebastian’s hand rubs dryly against his throat like the beginnings of a rug burn. “I can’t, I can’t, I can’t,” he says over and over, too honest. He opens his eyes and they feel jammed into his skull, too big, like they’re gonna burst right out with his next breath.

Sebastian’s face is pinched with concern, pinched so tight that Chris almost presses his fingers to the creases around his mouth to smooth them out, but all he does is jerk his hand reflexively and it closes around Sebastian’s and for the briefest second — for nearly a second, his throat closes and he honestly can’t breathe and his mouth wants to fall slack and open, but it doesn’t last. He tries to close his hand shut like that around Sebastian’s again, but Sebastian’s got his other hand around Chris’s now, and he’s tugging them away, relieving the pressure.

“Come on, let’s — let’s sit down, huh? We can count breaths. I’ll get you some water,” Sebastian says, shaky and soothing, as if he’s taming an injured animal.  

“This is so bad,” Chris says, and his mouth feels like it’s opening up too wide for the words, wobbling around them. He can’t look away from Sebastian’s stricken face, like he’s just touched a live wire. “I’m so — fucking sorry, I’m sorry. I didn’t think it would be this bad.”

“It’s okay,” Sebastian says, hurriedly. “That’s okay.” He’s still holding Chris’s hand and his other hand is still around Chris’s throat, clasping gently. “Is this —” He flinches. “Is this really what you —?” His fingers slide against Chris’s throat, adjusting his grip, and Chris flushes down to his chest.

“Yes, God yes, I can’t.” His shoulders shrug helplessly, his whole body lunging up towards Sebastian, his grip hard and fast around Sebastian’s hand suspended mid-air between their bodies. His eyes haven’t stopped watering. “I can’t breathe.”

“Alright,” Sebastian says, slowly as if he’s testing the word out. “Okay,” he says, and his face looks wide open, but he’s watching Chris closely. “Just, tell me when.”

He tightens his hand but it’s too slow — like watching walls close in and waiting for an impact that’s never gonna come, makes Chris’s heart jack-rabbit and kick in his chest, so he rasps out, “Do it. Sebastian, do it,” and Sebastian’s hand closes tight, his bicep flexing beneath his suit jacket, and then Chris can’t see anything because his eyes have closed, his mouth falling slack. Sebastian’s hand squeezes and Chris rides the edge of it, a short erratic breath flaring up in his chest, and then Sebastian releases him and all the air comes rushing back into Chris, his head going light and dizzy.

“Again,” Chris says before he gets a grip on anything, holding himself up by the sink ledge and Sebastian’s free hand alone. His feet don’t feel connected to his legs but they’re steady on the floor. “Again, you gotta —” and then the rest of what Chris is saying gets cut off when Sebastian tightens his hand again, choking him, even while Sebastian looks startled and wild, his eyes so big they’d be taking up his whole face if his mouth wasn’t hanging open.

He eases up before Chris feels all the air in his chest die out, but this time it forces Chris to breathe in hard and deep, and it feels so good to finally get his lungs and head opened up that Chris says, “Fuck, Christ, fuck me, finally.”

Sebastian starts drop his hand away and his jaw and throat work like he’s about to say something, but Chris grabs for him to hold his hand still against Chris’s opened collar. “Wait, just wait,” Chris says, squeezing both of Sebastian’s hands in his own.

“I’m waiting, I’ll wait,” Sebastian says after a moment of Chris breathing hard into the silence between them.

Each breath rubs uncomfortably at his throat, but it’s distracting, too — makes him forget about his tie on the floor tangled up with his feet and the way he’d felt like he’d been looking through a fishbowl out on the carpet — spots floating in his vision like big bright fireworks, his eyes welling with tears and hot, his whole face burning, squinting like he’d been staring right at the sun. He ventures, “Can you — can you do that one more time?”

Sebastian does, for longer than he has, until Chris feels like he’s swimming and his head is a stretch of blank smooth black ice. This time when he lets go, Chris can’t help the low, deep groan that comes out of him like it was tugged up from the pit of his belly. He gasps after, and then mutters, “Jesus fucking Christ,” because his cock’s hard in his pants, and his throat is hot where Sebastian’s gripping him.

“You want me to stop now?” Sebastian asks, quiet beneath the noise of Chris breathing long and deep.

Chris doesn’t want to have to say yes, so he says: “You don’t have to. I’m sorry, I’m really fucking sorry,” even though he can’t feel very sorry at all, not with how his head feels detached from his body, floating, his toes and fingers tingling, his whole body present and hyper-sensitive. “You don’t have to keep doing this.”

“I don’t mind,” Sebastian says. He looks like it, too — his face’s a hectic red and his hair’s curling by his ears and forehead, the back of his neck must be sweaty, but his hand’s warm and steady around Chris, and his eyes have gone black like bruises. “I can’t say that I mind.” His mouth cracks around half a grin, but his gaze keeps dropping from Chris’s eyes to his gaping mouth to his collar and neck. Then his gaze drops all the way down Chris’s body, and he must see — he must be able to see Chris’s hard from this.

“I mean, just once more,” Chris says. He wets his mouth. “One more time, for me. Just so that I can breathe.”

“Yeah, I can,” Sebastian says, looking into Chris’s face again.

Chris lets his eyes flutter shut, and Sebastian tightens his hand, tender but firm and consistent, a slow winding increase in pressure until Chris feels himself give up his breath like it’s the most natural thing in the world, and his head is so quiet, there’s no noise at all, not even the static. Then Sebastian lets him go.


End file.
